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Write the Damn Book Already
Writing and publishing a phenomenal book doesn’t have to be ridiculously complicated or mind-numbingly overwhelming. From myths and misconceptions to practical tips and sound strategies, Elizabeth Lyons (author, book writing coach, book editor, and founder of Finn-Phyllis Press), helps writers feel more in control of and comfortable with the business of book publishing. Her interviews with fellow authors discussing their writing processes and publishing journeys aim to help you untangle YOUR process so you can finally get your story into the world.
Write the Damn Book Already
Ep 108: Passionately Crafting Memoir and Nonfiction with Patti Hall
Click Here to ask your book writing and publishing questions!
Have you ever imagined trading a stable career for the unpredictability of writing and publishing? That's exactly what Patti Hall did, transitioning from urban design to becoming a full-time writer and publishing strategist.
Patti and I dive deep into the kind of personal transformation that makes most people's comfort zones quake. Her journey isn't just a career shift—it's a masterclass in resilience, triggered by her son's diagnosis with gigantism and propelled by an unwavering commitment to storytelling that matters.
Our conversation takes a candid look at the realities of traditional publishing. And, as we explore the myths surrounding bestseller status, we underscore the importance of writing with a purpose and focusing on genuine connections with specific communities rather than chasing commercial success.
Buckle up for an episode that's part hilarious writing room confessional, part vulnerable heart-to-heart. We're talking editing battles, narrative vulnerability, and those magical moments when personal story intersects with universal truth.
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Write the Damn Book Already is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with authors as well as updates and insights on writing craft and the publishing industry.
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Welcome to the Write the Damn Book Already podcast. My name is Elizabeth Lyons. I'm a six-time author and book editor, and I help people write and publish powerful, thought-provoking, wildly entertaining books without any more overthinking, second-guessing or overwhelm than absolutely necessary. Because, let's face it, some overthinking, second-guessing and overwhelm is going to come with the territory. If you're anything like me, I believe that story and shared perspective are two of the most potent ways we connect with one another and that your story, perspective and insights are destined to become someone else's favorite resource or pastime. For more book writing and publishing tips and solutions, oh, and plenty of free and low-cost resources, visit publishaprofitablebookcom. Oh my God, okay. So a couple of weeks ago it was probably longer than that.
Speaker 1:Time has no meaning the incredible Jesse Fine, who's the author of the remarkable memoir Breathtaking, sent an email to me and to Patti Hall and said you guys have to meet period. Like that's basically what she said. So fast forward. I book Patti on the podcast and I don't. She and I are so similar, it's frightening. I she said that she doesn't, and I too don't like to do a ton of research on people before they come on. I like to know just enough to not ask a stupid question like, hey, what do you do? Or hey, what's your name. But I like to just discover people while we're on the call. So I had gone out to Patty's website just to get the basic high levels and one of the first things I see is on her about page she's holding a mug that says Patty says write the fucking book. So I'm like, okay, I even think the script on the book is a script that I use with some regularity. So I thought, well, she's clearly my people. And let me tell you she is.
Speaker 1:Patty's a writing coach and publishing strategist for traditional and self-published authors, and she's an author herself. She works with multi-six figure thought leaders, influencers, business coaches and transformational leaders to get their message and their mission blooming in the world. And for a minute I thought, okay, so what are we going to talk about? Because we do the same thing. I think we share a lot of the same philosophies.
Speaker 1:But this conversation could have gone on for four times longer than it did, and there's so much great stuff in here for aspiring authors and even established authors alike, in terms of what this book writing process really is and, by the way, what it isn't. So if you're looking to feel seen, heard, validated, understood and also encouraged to get back to writing the damn book. Already. This episode is a thousand percent for you. As usual, I have all of Patty's links down in the episode notes. Let's get on with the conversation. It's almost as though we both started doing what we do because we started writing about our own situations. But is that what led you to do this professionally? Was writing Loving Large?
Speaker 2:Great question. I was already writing professionally. I had already decided. I had made a deal with my now ex-husband when I left my government career. I was an urban designer and wrote a strategic planner. I have an urban planning and urban design degree. I was designing parks for kids and I knew that the writing was pulling through. This was not my first book, but it's the first book I published. I knew that this was what I was going to do and my ex-husband said okay, I'll give you 10 years, like not as in all you know here's 10 years, but it was. I'll support you for 10 years in order to do this, because I know it could take that long for this to become feasible for you to practice it the way you want to do it.
Speaker 2:So, irony of ironies, that started in it's almost 20 years now and I was writing a book about a young man dying of pancreatic cancer. At the time I was very active in palliative care. My mother was a palliative care nurse, so I was. The medical world was very familiar to me because of it was dining table talk to us. I wrote that book literally as he lay dying and I never knew if I'd be ready to publish it because I didn't know how his family would feel about it. But it was his dying wish that I write it. So I wrote a book in 10 chapters of the 10 months while he died and I was also. I was already writing and I was writing teaching at the time, and I was a writer in residence in a couple of places. And then, you know, the universe has a way of slapping you with irony.
Speaker 2:My son, about a year after the man died, I wrote the first book about and I was ready to circulate it to agents. My son was diagnosed with gigantism. So he's six. He was 16. He was in his second year of high school and I was unbeknownst to me nearing the end of my marriage at the time because I I couldn't go and do the things I wanted to do. It wasn't meshing with sort of the way he saw his life going. But we had a very agreeable moment where he said I'll help you for 10 years. I know you want to do this. I know writing is what you always wanted to do. I was always writing, even in my former career. So what was born at the time? And this sounds like a dinosaur thing, but I started a blog. I started a blog in 2009.
Speaker 1:Hey, you didn't say like I pulled out my stone tablet. Well, that's pretty freaking close.
Speaker 2:So I started a blog and they're still out there. It was called Put Simply and I wrote about what it was like to learn about life and the world being my 16-year-old son's companion not his mother, because I was getting called into service to be things I never wanted to be. I knew stuff about 16 year old boys I did not want to know, and so we met in the middle and that ended up being the driving theme of Loving Large was that we endure because we have to, because we don't have any choice, and I endured because he had to and we met in the middle. So I call us cellmates a lot. I call us, you know, prison cellmates because we were in it together.
Speaker 2:So Loving Large um was written after the fact, but some of the writing in it was from some blogging that I did in order to keep people somewhat in touch who cared about what Aaron was going through. And, of course, now this is a really common thing where people pick up journals and people pick up their blogs and they, you know, they've got a launchpad for their memoir. Well, there we go. So that was how Loving Large was born, but I didn't complete it for 10 years because we were still in the thick of the disease. So by the time I then and then I got my own writing coach and two writing coaches they taught me everything. They believed in the book. I rewrote it a gajillion times because I wrote it first from the medical standpoint it was quite reportage and then I had to learn how to write it from my standpoint. And I was schooled in good memoir by Linda Seertsen and Betsy Rappaport, who I will, I will thank to my dying day for saying it's not there yet, it's not there yet, it's not there yet. And then they helped me with agenting. Agenting was exciting.
Speaker 2:I knew I wanted traditional, because I couldn't face being my own publicity for a memoir. I am although I don't sound it, I'm really introverted. I could not go out there. I will not be the person you see on stage unless I'm forced or I do it to save someone's life. So I didn't think I could do that. So I went to but can I stop you?
Speaker 1:real quick and ask were you surprised? And I don't know how many years ago did that book come out? It came out the first month of COVID. Oh beautiful. So that's just a dream, isn't it? So that? Were you surprised by how much or little publicity support you got from the traditional house? Did you think it was going to be more? Were you happy with what it was? How did that?
Speaker 2:all, I wasn't, because I was already in the world and and I didn't, and, honestly, I knew the book would find its people and I didn't care how it did. That's how introverted I am, and I still feel that way. So I sort of fall on the put the book out in the world and let it do what it's going to. Of course, I know a lot more now, 10 or 15 years later, as a publishing strategist and a book coach. No, I didn't, and it was the first month of COVID, so it didn't matter what I wanted or what we wished for.
Speaker 2:So I never saw the inside of a bookstore. Bookstores were closed for nine months of 2020 in Canada, so I never saw a book signing. I never saw anything. Sometime in 2021, a few bookstores in Canada ordered my book and I went in and I signed them after the fact, and but there's a chain of stores here called chapters Indigo, and so they did it like as a local author wrote this book, but by then I was onto other things as well, as one does. So I always say it was killed by COVID, this lovely little book, that, um, but it's out there doing its thing.
Speaker 1:I'm pretty proud of that. Yeah, I mean it does. That's one of the interesting things, and I'm curious as a writing guide coach. We've talked about how much we hate these words, but how do you set people's expectations when it comes to the traditional approach and thinking? I want this because they're going to do all my publicity for me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, it's just one of the pieces of fiction around publishing, isn't it?
Speaker 2:And I think that's where you and I come in. So one of the first things I do is try to figure out what somebody's dream is and gear it to be realistic but also towards their skill level and what they want the book to do in the world. So I call it books that serve, which is my future writing book. It's called writing books that serve. If you know who you're here to serve, we can figure out how you're going to find them. I knew who I was going to serve with Loving Large. I was probably going to serve other rare disease parents or people who were caregivers.
Speaker 2:I had no illusions that it was going to be different than that because I wrote it in a very particular conversational style with a lot of dialogue between my sons and I. So it's goofy and it's heartwarming. It highlights the journey of trying to get a specialist for a disease. Everybody knows of giants but nobody knows how rare it is and nobody knows how to find doctors that deal with it. So no illusions for me. But the first thing I do talk to people about and it always comes up quickly because the first decision everybody wants to make before they hire a coach and spend money on that they want to figure out where the money might be coming on the back end, right. So I do set expectations pretty irreverently low for people, try to be excessively realistic with them and you know people aren't my, aren't my writers really, if they want a bestseller, so they're not my peeps.
Speaker 1:I wish, like you, just saw what I did, but I was just talking to somebody about this yesterday and this took a while for me. I'm curious if it took a while for you to recognize the verbiage that people use when and I don't like to say like they're not ready to come into my world. That sounds extremely elitist and that's not at all what I mean. Other spaces, I'd say, equally ignorant things, just not knowing Right. But there is this. There's this sort of um dream that is sold in many ways and in many spaces on the internet, uh, about what bestseller status is and what it does and how it works and what it allows for you and and so I just sort of feel like I don't have time to be providing that level of like. If we got to break through that barrier first, yeah.
Speaker 2:Good point You're missing. You're missing the point is is how it feels. So if you get someone like me on board, you're doing it to cultivate the meaning in the message and you're going to do the work to figure out what the message is first, and you know there's ample space for book launch people here and it's let's face it, you can buy your New York Times bestseller status and, sorry to say it here, folks, you can buy your Amazon bestseller status. Just, it's just money, and that isn't Not sustainable either. Not sustainable and it won't hold for more than an instant. Exactly, and it isn't what most authors want. Because if we go through that point, especially if you go into traditional publishing, the quality has become a real focus for you because you're driven to an exceptionally high standard. Say what we will about publishing, traditional publishing is still pushing the quality bar all the time because there's even more and more demand to do so. So I still believe in it that way. But they're probably not my people if bestseller comes first when they tell me about their book.
Speaker 1:Right, Well, one of the things I think is interesting is ascertaining when someone says I want to be a bestseller, are they talking about them or are they talking about their audience? Because if they're saying I want to be a bestseller and what they mean is I want to get this book in the hands of a lot of people who can enjoy it, appreciate it, learn from it, grow from it, that's one thing. If they're saying I want to be a bestseller because what they're saying is I want to see my face on the billboard in Times Square and I want my bank account to explode and I want everyone to bow, that's a different kind of status that I can support, one. I won't support the other.
Speaker 2:Agreed. I created a course recently. You'd love this. What I did was I unpicked all the things I go through with someone in about a six month coaching relationship and I wheedled and I don't know how I managed it. And I had lots of help. That's how I managed it. I spent way more time in the course in fact, maybe three lessons of a 27 lesson course talking about knowing your why, and I know. Thank you, simon, we're all.
Speaker 2:We're all rolling around the term why, but what it means is what's that bubbling cauldron? What's the burning desire? Because if you can't name it, oh, I will help you find it. But that's what you come back to and guess what? I only want to read books where the author's burning desire got that book on my desk and it's clear. Yes, I feel really loyal to authors who I read and authors that I help if I know that they have stuck to their guns. And remember, you know the episode that you did with Zibi Owens, which I had heard before I realized that you and I were about to meet and I remember you saying that, that you know she really stuck to her guns with bookends in particular, and there she was. She was in a position where she could have gone at it a million different ways. But as she said and this is why I love Zibi is. She said like this mattered to me more than I realized and I didn't really know why it mattered so much. That bubbling cauldron, burning desire was in her. And you know, there's a simple question, right, there's a simple question.
Speaker 2:I always say to people like, what's your dream for the book? And I knew what mine was. So I said I wanted to see my name on the spine, and not just as the publisher. I wanted to see my name on the spine. And so that's what it was. And as soon as I saw my book, my father was a printer and publisher. So there are books out there that say FW Hall on them and I thought, oh, this is cool. But the first thing I did when I unboxed a box of my books was did a stack of them and saw my last name on there. Why that mattered, I have no idea. But my writing dream is a really old one. It goes back to when I was about four years old.
Speaker 1:Uh-huh, mine goes back to when I was about six. I can still see it, and I've told the story before of sitting down and writing by hand with a number two pencil on lined paper at my kitchen table, the beginning of but it wasn't the beginning of my first book. I started at chapter six because it felt so overwhelming to start at chapter one.
Speaker 1:So, I started at chapter six, which is technically still chapter one, but that book never saw the light of day. Obviously, the other thing that happened was I was only six and so after, and I was a very impatient person, and still am. But after 30 minutes I thought, my God, I'm not done yet, like this is taking too long, right? Oh, so you learned that early. Yeah, I learned it early, but I'm still relearning it, right?
Speaker 2:And six books later for you, you're still re-learning how long it takes and how much it takes.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh. And now, having moved on to fiction, now for myself, like it's a whole new. I might as well just start it all over again. I feel like an infant in this process. Do you ever work with you, don't? Do you ever work with fiction authors?
Speaker 2:Oh, the one exception I make is historic fiction, really. So I will work on. I have a serious World War II bent in me. Oh, okay, we found the area where we differ. Okay, so I will work on historic fiction because it has a true line. I'm such a geek, you know. It's also that I'm not as skilled. I'm just not as skilled, and I'm the first person to say it when, I got my when and I'm writing.
Speaker 2:My next book includes this in it how, although my my way into being obsessed with books was through fiction. And then it was rekindled in my teens by this little book nobody's ever heard of called Frankenstein, rekindled in my teens by this little book nobody's ever heard of called Frankenstein, and it all led on from there. But I knew that I lived in a nonfiction world because I was expressing in memoir style writing from the beginning.
Speaker 1:And what's so interesting is how much though memoir has I hate the words. Has too much, I hate it, but sometimes it's just true. I hate the words. Has to must I hate it, but sometimes it's just true it mimics fiction in its structure. And so now that brings it back to what you were saying before about the through line, and I want to ask you, when you talk about blog to memoir, I also work with a lot of authors who are taking their blogs or their journals and turning them into memoir, and it's so much more difficult to do than anyone anticipates going in, because I think the thought process is I've already done the legwork, I've already written it all. Now I just have to organize it, put it together, get it to make sense. Oh, my God, right, you're rolling your eyes, I'm rolling my eyes, and because it's more than that, and because it's more than that, but it's also such a there's so much growth and I'm sick of that word.
Speaker 1:I'm sick of all the words, patti, sick of all the words right, I'll do a new word, liz, we need a new word, but you figure it out while by doing it you figure it out.
Speaker 2:By doing it you figure out what you learned, which is the result of the memoir. By writing the memoir I didn't know why I wrote Loving Large. I knew I needed to write Loving Large. I get to the end and I realize my son very obnoxiously puts the end cap on. It's called you're going to love this one. A Letter from my Son At the end of my book.
Speaker 2:He wrote that in sort of his mid 20s and it was that I changed in order to become what he needed. And his greatest hope, which is my next book, is that I take back living for me, no idea that I had put my life on hold. I blew up, my marriage pushed away, my best friends Would I do, would those things would not have happened had I not been going through what I went through, and it helped me sort it out. So you know, someone said to me you know, did you have time to grieve losing your marriage? Did you have time to grieve what you went through? And I said I didn't, because I had a kid to keep alive. So I knew that my focus shifted and the book taught me that I didn't figure that out on my own and Loving Large is still teaching me stuff like that and it's been out for four years.
Speaker 1:And that's the thing too is it's sort of we have to decide when to put a pin in the book, we have to decide when to say the end and then hit publish. But it's still going to evolve after that. So so often people feel like well, it's not done yet, like is it time to put it out yet? And it's not an autobiography, so at some point it is time, because you're just telling a snippet.
Speaker 2:It is yeah, you know, there's an end cap to everything, though isn't there. And so, again, you're talking about me creating the course. There's a big piece of it is what's in and what's not, and that requires you to postulate, to speculate on where it might end, and all I mean by that is what's your end cap. So we talk about again, this is coursework, but I talk about origin story. Everyone talks about origin story, but for me, that's literally the catalyst, that's the spark that drops into the kindling, that lights the fire, and if you haven't found it yet, I take people back to find that, and we're always wrong.
Speaker 2:Everyone I meet they think they know what their moment of origin is, and that's it. My moment of origin is in I don't know, chapter 11 of the book, or something like that, where he turned to me as a 16 year old kid and he goes you know what? Mom, we should really help other people do this, because it's really hard to figure out how to get the doctors you need. And I went out of the mouths of babes, you know, and I said to him well, how will you do that? And he said well, you're a writer. So it wasn't born, it was, you know, through whatever catalystic process born, it was.
Speaker 1:Through whatever catalystic process it's excavated that's my word, and I'm getting tired of that too, because I use it all the time but it's under the surface, it's not the obvious answer, and so when you work with people and you're at the very beginning, you said something earlier, before we hit record on this, that I'd like to go back to, which was you don't work with newbies.
Speaker 2:I don't, and you know it's only because I don't have the skills they need. And although I go deep into writer's craft, I go deep into writer's craft at the revision point, not at creation point, and my skills are in the process. I call distilling, and it is distilling down the thing you can't see on your own. And when people first take a stab at a book, I'm not skilled in that because I will tell them to come back a year later when they've figured out what their challenges are. I am a great problem solver, but you know what I don't like being. I don't like being the person that says, oh, you're going to have problems with that, oh, that might not go the way you want.
Speaker 2:I don't want to be the dire forecaster. I want to be problem solving support. I know that's where I'm best at and I'm also too it sounds awful, but a little too experienced. Now I can't go back to how it feels to be in the very beginning with people. So most people come to me and they've got something, as I call it, in the can and I help them. My stages are unearth excavate, foundation, scaffolding, I help them build it out.
Speaker 1:But I also Do they just have the idea in the can, or have they already written?
Speaker 2:Usually how do you?
Speaker 1:define a newbie is an for. How do you define that for the purposes I want to?
Speaker 2:write a book and I think it's about being diagnosed with cancer okay, okay, and I think it's about and farther, farther along is okay.
Speaker 2:I've been working on these things around the cancer, about around my cancer treatment, and then, um, I've been doing some writing about what came after and you know, my marriage ended and there were a lot of comorbidities and I fell in love with my doctor and they can't see thematically how it works or what the through line is, they don't know what structure to tell it in, they don't know how the reader will respond.
Speaker 2:So somewhere in that, how to make it so that you're proud of it and a reader will respond work that's sort of where I step in and quality side. So I don't think it would be fair for me to take on a fiction project because I'm not as well read or experienced on fiction projects I, although I listened to a lot of fiction on audio and it's exactly because of how you said, because memoirists need to lean into the skills of fiction around character, because memoir is character driven and, as a significant portion of fiction, should the writer choose to make it that way, and I think that those strong voices in fiction can really teach us to be better memoir writers.
Speaker 1:You said something else that I'm intrigued by, because I, too, struggle. I think you and I are similar in a lot of ways, but also in that we don't like feeling like we're being negative. We don't want to because I want more books on the shelf, you want more books on the shelf. We know people have a story to share and it feels uncomfortable, if not outright unkind, to say no, no, like we have people have enough people telling them no, I don't need to be another one. However, this idea of it's not there yet. I'm curious how you work to deliver that message without just completely stomping on. So you know, I often talk about editing being just phase two. Right, you write the book and then the real work air quotes begins. Any book that comes back from an editor with not much hasn't really been looked at very well, Agreed Right, Even by the best writers out there, because there's just things that they don't see.
Speaker 2:And so how do you have you had situations where people are yes, yeah, yeah and you know nine times out of 10, I'm more rigorous when people want to go into traditional writing Because I know I have to be. That's the thing is. More than half my business right now this year is traditional, but I also publish. I usually publish five or six of my clients a year. I've had my own imprint for five, six, seven and now I actually name it. We put the colophon on the side in Cart Press.
Speaker 2:But you know I know what will fly in traditional because I read traditional and if people have that dream I want to help them get that dream. And if people want to self-publish author publish, hybrid publish, any of the alternative solutions I am all for that too, because it's a voice for me. But I'll tell you, I end up working with people based on their story. If I really think I can add value and that's why nonfiction has become my home I work with a lot of leadership and executive coaches. Right now I seem to have a lot of medical practitioners and allied professionals. That just seems to be now and it comes and it goes. But if I don't think I can strengthen you in some way to make you feel more confident, more qualified and get you more readers. You know I don't think I should be taking your money.
Speaker 2:It's really that simple, like I would love to just you see someone else, and it does make me sad when I have to say somebody no, I can't help you on your short story collection because you don't want me. I don't have those skills. You know, if I've only read a half dozen of them, you don't want me. The fact that I've read hundreds of memoirs and nonfiction books is entirely different For me. It's that I can't be disingenuous about it.
Speaker 1:How much do you promote the inclusion of storytelling in books that are, for example, by doctors? I work with a lot of therapists, or I've worked with a lot of therapists, and so I happen to be I'm not trying to lead the witness here, but I am a big proponent of including story within that, so that it's not a textbook, but also sometimes you know what, how do you, how do you navigate that?
Speaker 2:It's an absolute essential to me, so I start here.
Speaker 1:It's like every time you give me an answer, I like her, I'm like, I like her.
Speaker 2:I really like her. So here's the thing I worked on a book with. I worked on it started a long, long time ago where, even if somebody was writing what everybody in publishing thinks, they created this word but a hybrid memoir. No one wants to be talked down to, no one wants to be stupefied by somebody's brilliance. So here's the deal If you learned it by going through it yourself and you built a coaching business on it, hell to the yes, tell them how you learned it, because we want authentic, believable, relatable narrators who are not patronizing us. So I say and I say this flat out in my course, this is why they call me the irreverent book coach If you can't include a piece of your own memoir-esque story, even if it's only in the prologue, you won't get buy-in and connection with your reader and you won't ultimately convince them that they can do this.
Speaker 2:So I could have made, I could have made my book and I could have made a sequel to the book how to find the best doctors for your rare disease child. And effectively, that's what my memoir story was. Was this wild series of coincidences of how I did get doctors quickly for my son? And it is pretty funny that I'm now writing a book with his first brain surgeon and there and his and one of his colleagues was my father's best friend and my is pretty funny that I'm now writing a book with his first brain surgeon and there and his and one of his colleagues was my father's best friend and my father had had an accident and in emerge was this brain surgeon and all of these kooky things.
Speaker 2:So I literally teach people to look everywhere to find connections doctors, but that's not what I said the book was going to be about. So when I worked with Shelley Paxton in, her book came out in 2020, she's the former CMO of Harley Davidson she wrote a book with Simon Schuster called Sylvaticle and I actually wrote the back cover copy and said it's a memoir manifesto and now that term is everywhere. But that's the thing is. It has to be what you came to believe in because you learned it yourself first.
Speaker 1:See, that's the thing. So there's been all this conversation, which I happen to agree with which does not mean it's right. I just agree with it right About how prescriptive memoir doesn't work for the exact reason that you've just said. It's a very subtle nuance. It's that people feel like they're being talked down to and, on the flip side of that, lots of times when you're an expert in your field, it feels challenging to be vulnerable, because you feel like I love all the books that I work on, but one that is so close to my heart because it affected me really personally, is called Just Do Nothing, by Joanna Hardis, who is a licensed therapist, and it's really about how the best thing you can do if you are a person who, when faced with discomfort, loves to just what can I do to fix it? What do I do? What do I do? Those are my favorite four words in it. What do I do? What do I do? That's, that's my. Those are my favorite four words in those. What do I do? The answer is nothing, and it's it's not. It's a little oxymoronic, right, but the the underlying message is you've got to get kind of get quiet. You've got to do nothing for long enough to get quiet to figure out what to actually do, don't just do something in a tizzy.
Speaker 1:Well, one of the stories in that book at the very beginning in fact is about Joanna's experience just a few years ago being ghosted while on a very expensive vacation for her a big birthday of hers and the guy just did not show up. And that was a hard story initially to tell because the thought process was I'm supposed to be able to get through this. I'm a therapist. I help people navigate this kind of discomfort. So what does it say? If I'm admitting and I'm like it says that you're human, you feel the same thing, right, correct. So I know how to feel it and I know how to navigate it, and I'm honest enough to admit that as a human being, sometimes it takes a minute, even for those of us. I mean, you're a book coach, I'm a book coach, I am coaching myself to write this damn book, which is the title of my last book is write the damn book.
Speaker 1:The title of this podcast is write the damn book already, and I'm having to look into the mirror every morning. I now have, you know, my son's good friend. I said this yesterday comes over all the time and she'll just walk in and say, liz, are you, did you? Did you write today? Are you writing, like what's going on with? And she's not saying it. What's funny and interesting is she wasn't saying it to hold me accountable. She was genuinely interested How's the book? That's what she would say, how's the book coming? But I felt so yuck, having to keep looking at it and going shouldn't it be easy for us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I started. I did shout myself when I started writing my sequel. I'll call it a sequel book two. What have you I wrote? I did a sub stack series of things that were happening to me while I was trying to write my own book and I was laughing out loud at this stuff. Laughing out loud. See where I am saying oh, I'm going to give it up today. Uh-huh, maybe you should get a book coach. Wouldn't it be nice if you knew someone? And then it would be oh, I don't think this is going to work. This is too complicated. Oh, maybe you should get a book coach. Nice, if you knew somebody. But then what I realized is I needed to get a book coach and not just myself, because I can't see the forest for the trees. It's like you can't be your own editor, even if you're an editor right, I've got rose colored glasses and every other color too.
Speaker 1:Listen, my girl who does my hair does not cut her own hair. I, exactly right. I don't think dentists cleans their own teeth. No, the brain surgeon isn't. We could go on and on and on, and it's. It's so interesting because I and you have such compassion for how hard it is. I'm not just saying in a dismissive way write the goddamn book already. I, I, I am. I'm saying it as encouragement, but I also deeply understand yeah, you know I would.
Speaker 2:I love to do a podcast with you where we follow ourselves as we write, where it's like, okay, you're starting your next one, I'm starting my next one. Did you find this today? Are you finding this? Because we don't coach ourselves with much empathy, do we? And with a very soft voice. I, honestly, I would be so disappointed in a writer who is working on their book the way I am right now.
Speaker 1:I would be, I'd be so disappointed I would fire them. If they were my client. I would say I and I have had instances. I've never like actually said you're fine, I've never fired anyone, but I have said here's the deal. I've had people come, but I have said here's the deal. I've had people come back to me and say I want to hire you for another round and I have said no, because what I say is I listen, I will text you every week, I will Voxer you, I will email whatever, but you won't pay me because not not meaning I'm doing it for free, but meaning there's nothing I can give you that I haven't already given you, until you get your ass in the chair.
Speaker 2:Yep, and I'm not producing pages Now. Okay, so here's my caveat to all of that. Okay, the thing I say more than anything in my coaching practice is this is writing to dot dot dot. This is writing to me organizing my office. That's writing to, in fact, organizing my office and purging my library is how this book was born, because I realized it was about time I wrote this book. And where's my Frankenstein collection? Like I have many copies of Frankenstein. It was like wait a minute, where are they?
Speaker 2:I'm downsizing. It's like wait a minute. My library is like a map of my coaching practice and my life, because I remember when I was collecting books on living in the wild. I remember when I was collecting books on I don't know fiction about horses and all my wolves and stuff, so that was my kick point. So the thing is, yeah, I wrote a book about wool, I coauthored a book about wolves. But do you have wolves? I do not. Oh, okay, I am in love with a place in California called Wolf Connection, which is a wolf sanctuary.
Speaker 2:I work with the author on a book for Simon Schuster called the Wolf Connection.
Speaker 1:Okay, All right, carry on. I was imagining like one was going to walk in or something. No, that's just a book retriever. That's all I got, okay. He thinks he's a wolf, but okay.
Speaker 2:He probably does. That should be a book too. But you know what? The irreverent side of this is everything you're doing after you announce to the world you're writing a book, everything is working on the book and guess what? It is okay to take a really, really long time. Thank you, cheryl Strayed, for taking what? 14 years, or taking however long, because everything is leading up to that, and my coaches taught me that.
Speaker 2:I remember saying oh my gosh, it's going to take even longer, to Betsy Rappaport, and then my father died and I remember Betsy saying so, this is in the book now. And so it's like, oh, so this happens because this is in the book now. And I was like, oh my God, it was 2012. My son had gotten sick in 2009. I can't keep going on this, and you know I didn't complete the book probably till about 2017. I did many, many, many other books and things in the meantime. So it takes as long as it takes, and this is writing too.
Speaker 2:Those are the things I say more than anything, and it's brutal to be the terror of those glad tidings when you say to somebody the teller of those, when you say to somebody it's going to take as long as it takes, but guess what it is, and I'm a crappy client. Like I'm crappy, and you know, I hired the person that edited Loving Large because I loved her style and she knows my book so well. Yeah, yeah, I haven't written anything, so I'm going to cancel Wednesday. Oh, my grandson was just born, so can we do it in January? I'm terrible.
Speaker 1:Terrible writing. But and then each slide thereafter I think there were six was something that actually happened in like just a nine minute span yesterday, patty, while I was trying to write this scene.
Speaker 2:Liz, this is a podcast.
Speaker 1:I mean all the things I did on my way to writing the joke all the things I did, and here's the thing is, it was all true, like it all happened, because it's some of this shit I just cannot make up. And also then, as it's happening sometimes I think this could go in the book, like again, I'm I'm working on fiction right now, but I'm thinking what if she is a crocheter? Like what, like what if you know? And so I, I love the way you said it. I have said that, um, that sentiment, I have expressed that sentiment, but I haven't said it that way. And you know, one question I have, because I'd have this question as a client is okay. So how do you know the difference between this is all still writing the book and well, now I'm just freaking, procrastinating.
Speaker 2:Oh God, that's really good. Isn't that a hard one? So I do have a barometer for what is justified. Yeah, I have found one over the years, because you know I'm not 22, but I found one.
Speaker 1:You're not.
Speaker 2:Well, I know, I look it. Thank you, thank you, thank you very much.
Speaker 1:Um. This is the part where you tell me I look 21. Yeah, you look 21 or 36. That's the number I'm. I've been telling my children I am for feel about mid-40s.
Speaker 2:So I feel like I've really lost. I lost a decade in there somewhere, sure. But you know, I know if something's justified and it is kind of excavation, unearthing stuff. You know, my next memoir is as you said. My first one was this tiny, bite-sized piece of my life that was around coincident and context for my son's diagnosis and treatment with gigantism. There's nothing else about my life really well told in there, except the stuff that pertains to that. Because I had a really good editor and when I got off topic she said get that stuff about your family out of there. It's too distracting, get the stuff about this. So there's a heck of a lot of material waiting for the next memoir.
Speaker 2:So when I do procrastinate or not work on my book, it's got to be a really good reason to let myself off the hook. But I do everything that everybody else does. I get stuck. I think something's stupid. I think no one's going to want to read this. I think who's going to want to know that? I wake up with a nightmare every day for 37 years and it goes back to a day when I was nine years old. Who's going to want to know that? And then I sometimes wake up and go. Wait a minute. Everybody's going to want to know how I cope with waking up with a nightmare, from a nightmare, every single day for 37 years, since I was nine, and you know I didn't know that until I started writing. So writing gives back, is the message. Well, and the other?
Speaker 1:piece is. You don't even know what is going to resonate. You might think, oh, this story is going to grab so many people and it does or it doesn't. But what's interesting to me is when people come back and say I didn't, and it'll be something little and weird, like, wow, you're the only person I've ever met who also eats Reese's cups from the outside in, you know some small little detail, or it's something, um, that does have deep meaning, like I didn't think anybody else worried about. Fill in the blank. Um, and I think that's one of the big myths or misconceptions, or about book writing is that it's such a solitary pursuit I've said this many times on this podcast and I've said it many times outside this podcast it's such a solitary pursuit for the most part that we don't recognize that all other writers are having those exact same thoughts.
Speaker 1:Who wants to read this? This is stupid. It's not as good as the last thing I wrote. It's not as good as so-and-so's. Maybe I shouldn't be doing this. And it happens with the first book. It happens with the 15th book and that was in large part why I started this podcast, because I wanted to get as many authors to come on as possible. Who, at all stages right? First book, traditional, self, hybrid, 20th book, whatever to say, yes, I feel that way too.
Speaker 2:Yes, you know, the connection is the thing I just did a live on, this thing I call distill, which is basically a framework for how to do your revision in a way that you can go from the most generalized experience based on a scene and get down to a singular epiphany moment. Experience based on a scene and get down to a singular epiphany moment. I won't yada yada anymore about that, but as I, I did it because I wanted to, to be able to drill down on my own process so finitely that I could remember. There's value in just saying I'm going to write the book and moving toward writing the book, because the stumbling blocks there are just going to be more after you conquer the ones in front of you. It's art, people.
Speaker 2:This is not write a book in a month, get it done in a weekend. Here's your template. Can I show algorithm, use AI? If that's the book you want to write and you some people, somebody wants to read it, all the more power to you. But that personal journey of writing the book produces the book I want to read. I am as interested and that's why my podcast starts right in a few months. It's called books that serve and it's about behind the book. It's not what you wrote, it's the what you learned. That's what's in it for me. So that's what stimulates me as a book coach. But that's also when I go and pick up books, like I go pick up books after I have heard you interview people because it's like, oh my God, I love the story of how they said this happened.
Speaker 1:So that is how my interest in nonfiction reading nonfiction began, and it will not, we'll say, memoir, but it's kind of a combo. It's also why my interest in coaching memoir and nonfiction is so strong, because I have always been fascinated by the backstory. And it started with Marie Forleo, are you familiar? Okay, and it started with Marie Forleo, are you familiar? Okay? I remember when I first found, if you will, marie Forleo and honestly, she wasn't where she is today, but she was further along, she hadn't just started, yeah. And I remember wanting to know, okay, Marie, I, as though we're on a first name. I have dreams, but I remember thinking I see you now with your studio and your staff and everything's polished.
Speaker 1:I want to know more about and she always has been quite transparent about this, so I knew it existed. I want to know more about when you were working your nine to five job and would come home at night and sit down in front of a computer because we didn't have laptops yet, I don't think and you would record your stuff in your dark apartment and you didn't know if it was going to go anywhere and you didn't have anybody working for you and you were exhausted and you didn't know what the hell you were doing. I want to know about that and she has been very open about that over the years, which I really admire and respect about her, and that's how I feel about any air quote success that I learn about. I want to know what it was like. Yes, I want to know the journey of getting here because I want to learn how I can maybe incorporate some of that into my own journey, but also I want to I want to remind her in many ways that this wasn't overnight.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Isn't that lovely. And you know, I mean, if it was overnight, um shame on those people for talking about it, because it can't all, it can't be true but it can't be true.
Speaker 1:Look, some of these things are air quote overnight. The question is are they sustainable? It's like we hear about the person who won a hundred million dollars in a lottery, but then let's fast forward a decade and show me where they are, because more more often than not that money's all gone. We just don't ever hear about that. So the overnight successes and they scare me a little bit because I often think people are not prepared for what comes with that level of very quick rise. And if you're an introverted person and now you're being forced know, forced air quotes to be on tv all the time and be out and about and you're recognized and people want to take your picture and they expect more from you. And now, by the way, the hate is more, because that's the world we live in.
Speaker 2:People are not, they're not prepared for that, you're right you're right it, and it's a false dream, isn't it, that we want the book about our life and something vulnerable about our life to skyrocket us to fame. I'm not sure that that is the same. I'm not sure there's a correlation there. We want books to sell, yes. Do we want books in people's hands? Yes, and you know, I happen to know a couple of people whose books have done what I consider to be astronomically well, and you know if somebody has sold 10 or 15,000 copies of their memoir, I consider that they have done very well, especially with their first memoir in traditional publishing or self-publishing. You know, I've seen already someone's book who came out, a well-known memoir that's out right now, and I've already seen the impact that it's had on her personal life and just little things. But we're also not ready for it. So do we want to be Beyonce huge? No, we don't we don't.
Speaker 1:Well, I don't.
Speaker 1:I mean, I think there was a time many, many, many years ago when I thought I did, but you raised such an interesting point many, many years ago when I thought I did, but you raised such an interesting point, which is those are actually two stories that are running in parallel.
Speaker 1:One is I want to be, one is I want to write this book, and here's why. And the other is I want to be a bestselling author and I want to be famous, and it's. There's a different why to that than is underneath this book, and so that and that can be challenging. I mean, the number of people I've worked with and I'm imagining you're the same, but I'm going to I want you to tell me, um, who are working on memoir and have to take a break to actually go do the work on something that has been excavated, that they didn't anticipate, and whether that's personal work through journaling or walking, or talking to oneself, or hiring a professional to help them navigate it. It's happened many times and I give so much credit and admiration and respect to those who have been willing to say I'm going to put a pin in this for a second, because I want to tell the story. I need to better understand the story in order to really deliver it in a powerful way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean you're also leading to a beautiful wrap up of us together. But here's something. I'll be totally transparent around it. I've just relearned this through myself. Yes, I've had at least a dozen clients who've needed to take a break and I have had nothing but support for them. And it is a break because let's go see what else this book might want to be. And maybe for some people that was a talk, and you and I know many authors who take a break and then come right back because they're absolutely sure. So that's useful.
Speaker 2:But I'll tell you that I know why my my working on rambles, which is what I call what I call my next memoir I know why I slowed down, because I found some things I wasn't ready to see Right at the beginning. So you know I'm I am walking, talking honesty about this because I, I and I hired, I hired the coach, I hired my former editor and I said let's just have brainstorming calls once a week and she was, we'd be talking, talking. She said, no, write that, write that because no one's going to believe that's true of you, patty. No one's going to believe that's true of you building this business and working on hundreds of books and publishing however many, no one's going to understand that you can have your foot in both of those ponds. So, writing about my childhood and key relationships in my life, it wasn't on my radar that that's what this book is about. I was calling this book when To Next because it's what happened after Aaron got medically managed and got to be an age where he could manage his own clinical journey. So I thought it was about my search for home and belonging, which it is.
Speaker 2:But I didn't realize I was going to go back to why I've never belonged and why I've never had a sense of home and that unearthing has. Um, it's taken some time for me to figure out what I want my voice to sound like in that, because it's not the same saucy pants hockey coach voice that's mom of a teenager. In my other book it's not that at all, because I am a little literary and I do wax poetic and I do fall in love with trees and wolves and Frankenstein and all the things that I've clung to as accoutrements to my identity. But now I've got to say that my search for home is because I never had one, not because I'm searching for home again. That admission, that bedrock realization has become a stuck point for me.
Speaker 2:So it happens to everyone and you know, the best books require us to step away to make sure it's true and to test that we're okay and to be really, really sure that this is part of what we want to put in the world. You don't have to tell everything. You and I know what memoir is. It's a snapshot that is coordinated and curated around a thematic period of our lives that can start and end anywhere. You know what. I don't have to talk about my childhood in order to talk about what I've done in the last journey, and I won't give ink to people that have caused me pain unless it's absolutely necessary. Then it comes you go to your book coach, you go to your editor and you say keep me on track so that the book is about me as the central character and I don't go down rabbit holes that aren't relevant to the reader. So I cling to that, and when people and you also- don't have to share things that you don't-.
Speaker 2:No, that's not what it's about, right? You know, a book isn't a tell-all. There's no such thing. A memoir is a very carefully curated series of illustrations, and that's why illustrations are my thing, you know, I know. Show, don't tell. It's of course, it's true, but for me it's illustrate. Don't pontificate, I'm not standing back here. Look at me. I've got parenting all figured out. My son had rare disease and I was there for him. That's not it. I am not in my ivory tower sister. I am over here grinding through tough life stuff just like everybody else, and I have nothing but empathy for people who can write about it.
Speaker 1:That's like. You know, when I wrote my first, my first and second books were about uh, my first one is raising twins in their first year. My second one is raising toddler twins. Oh, my God, kill me. Now we're not doing uh. People were like when are you going to do like the preschool? It's not happening and we're definitely not doing high school.
Speaker 1:But you know, I would do local news stuff, little segments on parenting or whatever, and they would put as my byline parenting expert and I'm like you cannot, I beg of you to put like knows nothing, I don't care, because what's going to happen is I'm going to tell people what my strategies are for managing tantrums and target. And right after this puppy airs, someone's going to see my kid losing it in aisle five, right and so to yes to what you're saying, you know. And coming back to the Zibi thing, I remember how staunchly Zibi advocated for herself with bookends. I am not going to talk about my divorce. I know people are going to have questions. They still have questions. I don't have to answer them and of course I'm like no you don't.
Speaker 2:I won't be telling like my um. Everybody knows that my everyone saw my marriage and in my book, but it's not a story in there. And I remember when my sister-in-law reached out to me and she said you did such a fair job, such a fair job of not, you know, talking about your mother or talking about your ex-husband, and I said they simply weren't relevant to the way I wanted to tell this book. It's a love letter to my son, and even I didn't know that, because I did not want my book to be called a mother's rare disease memoir. I didn't want to get tagged as a mom writer although if you call me a mom writer, I'm mom and a writer and I'm now grandmother and writer and all those things. But I realized that I couldn't see that that's what the book was about. Was that I was up against the fight for my kid's life. I didn't see that. No, I was was just doing what you do when you see somebody close to you suffer and you've got access to the internet.
Speaker 1:Right, and it almost begs the question which I've asked many people if you knew that this was, that this is what it was about, would you even have dipped your toe in? And I can only speak for myself and the people I've asked that question to, but the answer has, 100% of the time, been no.
Speaker 2:Right, that's a. I'm going to sit with that one, to be honest, because I think or not, not.
Speaker 1:I can't say that it's. I never would have it's. I would have given it a little more thought, like I didn't know this is what I was signing up for. I think I'm going to hire you as my book coach.
Speaker 2:Oh no, it's gratis. So because you know that right there is is how to validate that your book is important. You didn't know then enough, would you do it the same way again? Yes, because when? Almost never do we look back on the way we handled something in crisis and say I should have done a better job. No, you are clinging to your humanity and that's what I did.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I caused a ruckus. I caused a ruckus. I fell into the deepest depressive episode of my life. I took me years to figure out what that was about. I left a lot of my living behind. My kids knew it, liz, but I didn't. And now I'm going to try and write what they taught me after. Right, it's just, it's this the hindsight. That's what memoirs are about, is the hindsight. But and I thought I would write it right away I mean, here I am, I am living in publishing, right, I've got first writer refusal with my publisher. You think I would have turned around and gone okay, let's write the sequel. No, I had so much to learn, yeah, and I still, I still haven't learned it. So you know, ask me in six months whether I'm working on it and I've got the book deal. Ask me in six months whether or not I've figured anything out.
Speaker 1:Well, I will, because we're definitely doing this again.
Speaker 2:This is pure pleasure, my gosh, so much fun and I always ask people and I'm going to ask you too.
Speaker 1:It's always my last question Every time I remember what are.
Speaker 2:what are you reading now? Or what have you read recently that just knocked your socks off? Okay, so here we go. This is the wild card. So I read two books a week on audio because I believe in hearing it to unpack its structure.
Speaker 2:So, I am going to literally pull up my Audible account and I am going to tell you I just read the Blue Hour by Paula Hawkins. Okay, the Blue Hour, paula Hawkins. It was fantastically well woven. Is it memoir? No, it's fiction. Fiction, okay, it is fiction. Yeah, so memoir wise, I think. The latest one I read was A Little Less Broken by Marion Shambari, and that was recommended to me by another coach in the business, marion Roach Smith. And of course, not long before that was your friend of mine, jesse Fiennes' Breathtaking, which we know well. I mean, come on Right. So I have been absorbing fiction because it keeps me on my game for how to structure books. Again, I pull a lot, I know I pull a lot from fiction, even though I don't realize it. So that's what.
Speaker 1:I'm For sure.
Speaker 2:And I am I'll name drop. I am rereading Frankenstein line by line, because Frankenstein, running in tandem with my life, is part of what I'm doing in my next memoir. So I spend a lot of time with the middle seven chapters of Frankenstein. But to be continued.
Speaker 1:You're the only person who's ever said I spend a lot of time with Frankenstein.
Speaker 2:It is the finest book ever written in my mind.
Speaker 1:The finest book ever written in my mind is Anna Karenina.
Speaker 2:So okay Now, if I can finish, Anna Karenina I would like to I know how many years should I spend, and I can't listen to it on audio because I can't either. I need to see people's names, and the Russian names I need to see is for sure she's the daughter of so-and-so, because that's what the name says. She is.
Speaker 1:I've read it probably three times, front to back and I still have to go back and reference the characters and the map. Thank God for the list. Thank God for the list. Right, I don't, I don't. Um, I think that's not a great approach today. If you have to have a list or a map, we're getting a little complicated, unless you're writing some sort of massive fantasy. But I don't work on those because nobody wants me to work on that.
Speaker 2:I love them, but I just want to read them.
Speaker 1:Bingo. I'm way out of my element. I can't figure out how they got there, you know it's a whole thing.
Speaker 2:but world building in my head, no, no, no, no no, no, no.
Speaker 1:Well, oh my gosh. Thank you. I am so glad that Jesse connected us and that we're going to do it again.
Speaker 2:Please have me back on. I've got a million ideas for talking to you, including guests. I've got guests for you.
Speaker 1:All right, Well we're going to chat about that. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you enjoyed this episode, this is your friendly reminder to follow or subscribe, leave a quick review and share it with someone you know has a great story or message, but isn't sure what to do next. Also, remember to check out publishaprofitablebookcom for book writing resources and tips and to see all the ways we can work together to get your book out into the world. Again, thanks so much for listening and I'll talk with you again soon.
